


What's in a name?

by actuallyamermaid



Category: The Proposal (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 04:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15700035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actuallyamermaid/pseuds/actuallyamermaid
Summary: Margaret works on her (huge) amount of paperwork and gets stumped by the easiest question of all: Name?Or, an independent business woman considers the name change question as she and Andrew prepare to get married.





	What's in a name?

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty short and self-indulgent and to be honest I can't believe I'm posting it at all (I wrote it years ago), but I thought someone out there might like it. It came after some frustration that (no fics that I read, years ago) seemed to consider Margaret keeping her name. Whether or not she keeps her last name upon marriage, I can't imagine that - as a high-ranking, independent business woman - she would not at least have some qualms about whatever choice she made. And so this drabble was drabbled. 
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I own nothing!!!! not the movie, not any rights to the characters/actors/plot, NOTHING! Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Margaret sat, alone, on her couch.

Normally she felt alone when she sat on this couch. Before, when she came home from long days at the office, trying to forget the whispered words she heard behind her back, not even the TV or white noise machines could drown out the lonely silence. She could only remind herself that this was what she loved – books, and publishing – and sometimes you had to be tough to get the job done.

Today, though, right then, she was only alone physically. She wasn't thinking about the silence or the negativity at work. Those feelings were far in the shadows of her mind, unable to take hold like normal. There were two things, currently, that were doing an excellent job of keeping the loneliness back. 

She was filling out a form, and staring at her finger.

She had quipped to Andrew that he needed to get down on one knee, and he didn’t; in all honesty she hadn’t expected him to. He did a lot of things she didn’t expect him to, and the reason her eyes kept drawing toward her finger as if by a magnet was one of the many things she was not expecting.

After answering the questions with the immigration office, they had walked out into the world and into a new way of life – settling into a relationship that was unlike any she had ever imagined for herself. Somehow, though, she didn’t mind. She liked it. She knew the divorce rate and she knew that it might not work between them, but she also knew that she cared about him, deeply, and about his happiness. Furthermore, she cared about getting to know him more. And marrying him to date him seemed like a great way to do that.

He had asked her on a real date, then, at his place. He wanted to make her dinner. She was flattered, pleasantly surprised, and she immediately said yes. Little did she know he would propose a second time, a real time, with a ring that left her breathless.

“Rings might not be your thing,” he had said to her. “But I wanted to give you this anyway. To remind you of the crap you put me through to get here,” he added, and she knew he was joking – mostly, anyway – and she was thrilled to wear it.

She enjoyed looking at it. 

She did not, however, enjoy looking at the form sitting in her lap.

She had heard the jokes about taking tests and only getting one question right – the blank that said “Name:” – but she grumpily had to admit that she would have failed this test completely, all because of the stupid “name” blank.

They had gone around town one day picking up all of the necessary forms for their marriage, her visa, etc., and one of them had been the one to fill out a name-change request.  


She stared at the blank. 

Traditionally, she would have changed her name to Andrew’s. “Margaret Paxton,” she said out loud to no one. She thought it worked.

But could she drop “Tate” just like that? She had made a name for herself, for her career. She was in a high level of management at an important publisher. Everyone knows her by her name; all of her e-mail accounts, profiles, etc. are filed under “Tate.” All of her networking, her valuable networking, was set up by a Margaret Tate. What would it take to transfer that to Margaret Paxton? She shuddered at the thought of the paperwork, and then laughed to herself as she imagined making Andrew do it, as her assistant. He would abhor it and she would laugh and laugh.

But no. It would be a pain, and it would take who knew how long to finalize everything – not to mention how long it would take all of those people to adjust! And even more than that, did she want to lose her identity as Margaret Tate? She did not need a man to define her. Would she be exchanging that identity for a new name? Would all of those people who would have to get used to her name change judge her, just another woman in love, giving it up for a man?

She shuddered again.

She was also all that was left of her family, the Tates. Her eyes now drifted away from both the ring and the form to gaze at a family photo she had sitting on a table nearby. If she became a Paxton, the Tates – her Tates, and even more importantly, her parents’ Tates – would be gone. 

_It's the same for Andrew, though,_ she thought. Her eyes fell once more to the ring. He was the only one to carry on the family name. She could only imagine what his father would do if Andrew gave up not only the family business but the family name. She did not want to picture that any further.

“Andrew Tate,” she said out loud. Would he do it? He might, to honor her parents and her, as yet another thing he was sacrificing for her – and, honestly, she thought he might do it just to spite his father, although she hoped they were moving beyond such feelings. Yes, she felt that, if she asked him, he would become Andrew Tate.

But she could not ask him to do that.

But then … was he asking _her_ to do that?

The sound of a key at the door shook her out of her slowly darkening thoughts ( _What if he is expecting me to become the submissive housewife? What am I getting myself into?_ ) and the sight of him entering her home washed those thoughts away. 

She watched as he tossed everything he was holding – a briefcase, a book, a pamphlet of papers, a coffee – haphazardly onto tables and the floor, whichever was closest and seemed most appropriate for the object in question. He spotted her on the couch, heaved a sigh, and plopped down next to her, disrupting her neat stack of forms and the carefully placed decorative pillows. 

_I’m getting into this,_ she thought, life with this man, who completely frustrated her at the same time that he made her fall in love with him more, just by being himself. She was thankful that he had so instantly made himself at home with her. It made her feel at ease.

He started asking her questions about her day, and exchanging her answers with his own. He was telling her about a new book he was interested in publishing when words just started tumbling out of her own mouth. It seemed her brain had been processing the name-change issue while she had been attentively listening to her future spouse and it couldn’t take it anymore.

“Are you expecting me to become Mrs. Paxton?” 

He stopped talking abruptly and instantly, mid-word, and he stared blankly at her for a few moments. She had caught him off-guard and now she felt a little guilty because he had been telling her about something important to him and she had just interrupted him, with something that was very serious.

“Do I want you to become my mother?” he finally asked.

“No,” she said firmly, “though she is lovely. I mean, do you expect me to change my name to yours? You know, when we get married.”

“Ah,” he said, and ran a hand through his hair. “Actually, I figured we would hyphenate them,” he said, looking at her carefully, as if he was unsure if it was a good idea or not.

“We would hyphenate them?” she repeated, mulling it over. “You mean, both of us? You would hyphenate it too?”

“Yeah,” he said, leaning forward, and she thought he actually seemed a little excited about it. “My dad would give birth to kittens if I dropped my name… and I don’t expect you to give up yours. We can honor both of our families, and our accomplishments, and each other, by taking each others’ names.”

He looked at her expectantly, and she stared back at him, processing. After a moment, the first coherent thought floating in her head was _I love him._ They had been in a functional relationship for a very small amount of time, and he already understood so much about her. But even more than that, he accepted it and loved it.

“I love you,” she said, and she was embarrassed to realize tears were pricking at her eyes.

His eyes widened in alarm and he awkwardly put his arms around her, cradling her, about to apologize for who knows what, when she continued. “That sounds perfect.”

They snuggled into the couch, both relieved: He that her tears had been joy, and not sadness; she because this whole name thing was settled. And then a thought occurred to him. 

“Whose name should come first?”

She rolled further into his side and groaned.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfiction I have written in in a long time, and my first ever for a movie like “The Proposal.” I personally don’t think there’s a perfect answer for name changing (though there is quite a bit of thoughtful literature about each of the name change options out there on the internet). Margaret's thoughts are the same ones I have had as I pondered this. It might seem a bit random, but I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading!


End file.
